For the News 10 Wingmen segment filmed last Friday, Bob Plain and I discussed allegations on his Web site, RIFuture, that the Hilton and Renaissance hotels in Providence, owned by the Procaccianti Group, had fired some employees because they were pro-union.  None of the articles made any attempt to confirm the allegations or seek any response from the hotels.

It’s not an issue that’s been widely covered in the media, so I read what was available and went on air essentially to make the point that labor unions tend to reduce everything to the power of the business versus the power of the unions, whereas we should be talking about the most effective way to operate the economy and, more importantly, the value of workers.  If businesses are getting away with undercutting employees’ value as workers and as human beings, then there’s something wrong in the system, and (I’d argue) the labor movement as it currently exists makes that something worse.

Specifically in Rhode Island, our horrid economy (due largely to bad public policy and labor union domination) puts workers at a terrible disadvantage.

While filming, I made three additional points:

• We were all offering opinions based on one side of the story, and the hotel management (made up of human beings, as well, let’s remember) surely has a different view.
• The allegations being made would indicate illegal behavior, so as I said, “we’ll wait for the lawsuits” because “right now we have the word of three people” who are union advocates.
• I offered examples of abusive management from my own experience and suggested that everybody has similar stories.  As we wrapped up the segment, I said, “if it’s against the law, they shouldn’t be doing it, but I think it’s a more interesting question to wonder why Rhode Island workers have to put up with this sort of garbage from employers.”

Somehow, that became the headline, on RIFuture, “Justin Katz: Procaccianti Group treats employees like ‘garbage’.” (See update below.) Apart from being a complete misrepresentation of what I’d said, that declaration, as Bob points out, was likely to raise eye-brows, because the lead lawyer for Procaccianti is on the board of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, for which I work.

But that’s clearly not what I said.  Even grammatically, there’s a difference between stating that one’s behavior is garbage and saying that one treats other people as if they are garbage.  More importantly, though, it’s impossible to watch the segment and conclude that I was positively affirming that the allegations against the hotel were true.

During the segment Bob stated that he was absolutely “sure” that Procaccianti would have responded to the allegations if they weren’t true.  Put aside the possibility that ongoing lawsuits and labor disputes might give the company reason to take a “no comment” approach for the time being.  Nobody on RIFuture bothered to ask, and as I said, there hasn’t been any coverage elsewhere, that I’ve seen.

As a matter of fact, though, when people ask, the company does offer another story.  In an April 8, 2013, letter to two members of the Providence City Council, Renaissance hotel General Manager Angelo DePeri states, “It is untrue that working conditions at the hotel are ‘poor’ or ‘dangerous and unsafe.’ In fact, the hotel has an outstanding safety record and we remain committed to our employees’ safety and well-being.”

In a March 10, 2014, letter to Brown University President Christina Paxton concerning the Renaissance, James Procaccianti states that, since acquiring the hotel in 2012, they had “implemented very few changes, and the employees enjoy very good working conditions (they clean fewer rooms than at the unionized Omni Hotel in Providence) and a competitive wage and benefit package.”

Indeed, in another letter to the City Council members, DePeri insists that the company isn’t even opposed to unionization (emphasis in original):

… I can assure you that it has always been the position of the hotel to respect our employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and specifically their right to be represented by a union or not.  The National Labor Relations Act provides a specific framework for our employees to make their decision, that is, an election conducted under longstanding and well understood procedures.  The hotel is not opposed to an election.  To date, however, the union [Unite Here] wants the hotel, for itself and for any employees who may not want to be so represented, to voluntarily forfeit those rights under existing federal law.

I’m not an expert on labor law, and I haven’t investigated this particular dispute, so there may be nuances on which the other side would insist.  I will say, though, that it would be entirely consistent with experience and with other incidents if the union were agitating wherever possible (including, for some reason, Brown University) in order to put public pressure on the Procaccianti Group in order to bully even more leverage to make current and future hotel employees the union’s permanent clients.

The union is a business, too, after all.

Lying and dehumanizing people is a typical labor union tactic.  The first step of not putting up with it is to remember that everybody involved in business is a human being with his or her own view of incidents and his or her own value, and to be more careful about how we represent what other people say.

 

UPDATE (3/26/14 9:34 a.m.):

As I posted this (but definitely before I did), Bob changed the headline to “Justin Katz: Management Isn’t Perfect After All.”  While not specifically what I said, it’s certainly not a statement I’d dispute, and I thank Bob for taking my objections over his post’s title under consideration.